The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
